Embodiments of the invention described in this specification relate generally to housekeeping cart storage drawers, and more particularly, to a housekeeping cart drawer with a battery-powered charging dock for storing, charging, transporting, and deploying a robotic vacuum.
Commercial robotic vacuums are designed to ease the work a person has to do in cleaning a room or in cleaning several rooms. The existing robotic vacuums are commonly used in homes, but usage of robotic vacuums in other areas or for commercial/industrial deployments is limited due to several existing issues. For instance, existing robotic vacuums cannot be used to clean hotel rooms because they rapidly loose their charge, cannot be easily deployed by maids or other cleaning personnel without dropping them or causing repetitive motion-based back strain or injury, and they do not have enough power to provide enough suction sufficient for cleaning carpets commonly used in public establishments, such as hotels, inns, etc. Addressing their power limitations with bigger batteries only worsens the problem for maids and other housekeeping cleaning personnel who suffer muscle strain from increased weight of the bigger batteries and repetitive motion injuries from repeatedly bending over to pick up or deploy robotic vacuums with the bigger batteries.
Thus, hotel maids and other housekeeping cleaning personnel have no present way of effectively deploying and transporting a robotic vacuum without repeatedly bending down and without the robotic vacuum losing power due to increased suction requirements that quickly drain the robotic vacuum batteries of power. Also, when finished with a clean-up routine, robotic vacuums are configured to automatically return to a stationary home/charging base making it difficult to deploy the robot in different non-adjacent rooms unless the stationary/home/charging base is repetitively picked up, carried, and plugged into the wall socket of each room to be cleaned because the only way to deploy robotic vacuums in non-adjacent rooms currently is to manually pick them up and carry them.
Therefore, what is needed is a way to provide a robotic vacuum with increased power from larger batteries and which enables the robotic vacuum to return automatically for charging so that housekeeping and cleaning personnel are not required to bend down to pick up and carry the robotic vacuum and not required use a power outlet in each room to be cleaned and be forced to repetitiously bend over, carry, relocate, plug in, and unplug a charging port for the robotic vacuum in each room.